1Center for MR Research, University of
Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States

Balanced
steady-state free precession (SSFP) sequences have been used for non-contrast
enhanced vessel imaging due to its high SNR efficiency and bright blood
signal. However, as cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) signal is also bright in SSFP
images, the application of these techniques to brain has been limited. In
this work, we demonstrate that instead of appearing as bright signal, the
vessels in the brain have low signal intensity in high-resolution 3T images.
Using a dual-half-echo 3D projection reconstruction based SSFP sequence, our
results show that non-contrast enhanced high-resolution vessel imaging can be
obtained rapidly along with high quality T2-contrast images.